Start Now, Figure It Out Later

Noah Greenberg didn’t launch Stacker to change the world. He launched it because he didn’t want to work at Amazon.

When the startup he’d been at for six years got acquired, Amazon gave him a choice: take the severance or scroll through 30,000 internal job listings. He gave it twenty minutes.

“I looked for about 20 minutes and decided I didn’t want to work at Amazon,” Noah says.

So he teamed up with three coworkers from that same company. They pooled their own money as working capital and gave themselves six months to figure out how to build a business.

“All eyes were on: how the f** are we going to make money as quickly as possible,”* he says. “And we got to profitability within that six months.”

That business became Stacker, a newswire and syndication platform that helps brands turn their best editorial into widely distributed content—picked up by thousands of local and national outlets across the country. The company now does millions of year in revenue, employs 40+ people, and has been profitable every quarter since launch.

No VC. No hard pivots. Just staying in the game long enough to notice where the momentum was building.

“The advice I give to founders is: I don’t love that idea, but I think you should do it anyway,” Noah says. “Because the reality is, it’s a very low probability that you’re still doing the same thing in four years. But you won’t figure out what that thing is unless you’re in the game.”

Noah’s been in the game since high school—first running a DJ business with a friend. They borrowed $3,000 from their parents, bought speakers, mixers, and CD decks, and started working school dances for $100 an hour.

“All of our friends were working at the deli making sandwiches. We’d go out Friday night, work three hours, and each walk away with $150. It was the coolest job you could possibly have in high school.”

They even paid for a monthly DJ CD subscription instead of pirating music off Limewire, just in case the feds were listening.

“We were legit even at 17,” he laughs.

He carried that same mindset forward—low overhead, clear value prop, earn back the investment quickly. But he didn’t rush into starting a company after college.

“I always knew I’d want to start something, but I wasn’t in a hurry,” Noah says. “I didn’t want to do it unless my heart was really in it.”

Instead, he joined a 15-person startup right out of school. He stayed for six years.

“I got so much experience there. I learned more than I would’ve at any big company,” he says. “I always tell people: the two best jobs out of college are either at a tiny startup or in management consulting. They’re complete opposites, but they both give you way too much responsibility way too early—and that’s how you learn.”

That startup got acquired, which gave Noah the money and the nudge to finally launch something. But he and his co-founders were honest about the timeline.

“We couldn’t work for two years without pay. But we had enough to give it six months,” he says. “If we weren’t paying ourselves by then, we’d walk.”

Instead, they hit break-even within the deadline. And the business just kept going.

Stacker’s early offering was simple: editorial content brands wanted, placed in outlets they couldn’t reach on their own. But the media landscape kept shifting—and so did the company.

“There have been years where we said, ‘We’re doing this, and we don’t need to grow,’” Noah says. “And there have been years where we sprinted. When you’re bootstrapped, you get to make that call.”

That optionality—move fast or hold steady—is something he doesn’t take for granted.

“If we had raised money, we probably would’ve gone out of business at some point in the last eight years,” he says. “We would’ve gone all in on a bet just to make the next fundraise possible. And that’s not how media works.”

Instead, Stacker stayed lean, stayed profitable, and waited for the pull.

“Something people always said but I didn’t understand until I saw it—market pull is stronger than any ability to push,” Noah says. “Once the market wants what you’re doing, that’s when things really pick up.”

In the last year, he’s felt that pull like never before. More brands are building real editorial arms. More companies are hiring journalists. More organizations are investing in media as a long-term strategy—not just a content calendar checkbox.

“It wasn’t a great business to be in four years ago,” he says. “But now? It’s starting to become a really incredible one.”

So Stacker’s next chapter isn’t about reinvention. It’s about tightening the engine.

“Right now, it’s about capitalizing on the opportunity,” he says. “Building a really strong go-to-market motion. Nailing our messaging. Just doing the work.”

That’s been the throughline from day one.

Start lean. Stay real. Adjust as you go. And don’t wait for perfect timing.

Because if there’s one thing Noah’s sure of—it’s this:

“You won’t get to the great opportunity unless you’re in the game.”

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